Tag Archives: Challenges

Writing this post has taken me a great deal of courage. However, as does every day require courage, every hour that I continue to walk this path, towards recovery. Thus, if ‘practice makes perfect’, I have reasoned with myself, that it is okay, and probably a good thing, to write with courage, too.

This is a reflective post, speaking of recognition, sadness, determination, and hope. The metaphorical style helped me to communicate something through words, which I still don’t fully understand myself. Hope whispers to me, that someday I will, and therefore will find myself better equipped to win this battle.

There is a ‘demon’ inside my brain, and it has managed to gain near total command. This demon manifests itself as addiction.

It entered my life, disguised in a mask, performing the role of a ‘friend’, and in the beginning, it played the trick of being helpful. This masked stranger quenched my thirst, my aching, for a temporary release, from all the anguish of what was going on around me, to me, and to others as well.

I know that I need to reclaim my own mind, and wrench back control from the demon. Take back the reigns, upon realising they are no longer in my grasp.

Fear and despair warn me, this demon is going to hurt me, particularly as I begin to fight back. It will scream, kick, and shout at me. All of its might will be thrust forward, in the demon’s attempt to survive.

Clenching, tough onto these reigns, desperate to persist in dominating my head space, leaking poison into my mind and my will, the demon is adamant it shall not relinquish, never let go of the throbbing life source which sustains it. That ‘life source’ being the ‘treasure’, which it found, lurking within the deep waters of my psyche.

The Demon’s treasure chest exists not, as one might expect, in the form of a breakable crate, dripping with Gold, jewels, wealth, prize or happiness. Rather, it is the antithesis of such a positive, glowing beacon. There lies no victory to behold, here, for any good willed explorer.

‘Treasure’ for this demon, was/is in fact the lack of it. It emerged as emptiness, a hollowed out crate, where once harboured self-belief, ambition, hope, faith, volition and will.

When the world around me came to blows, seemed to strip away all I knew about myself, all that comprised my identity, almost everything I held so dear and close. Like a tsunami which washed away my happiness, stole the love of my life, swept away my love for life, crippled my career, and bleached out my livelihood, came the breakdown of my mind. In the aftermath, I felt that all I had left was a tired and tested, faltering soul.

When followed, that violent sexual assault, the breaking of a trust I had so desperately believed in, through dark, vulnerable hours, my soul seemed all but smothered, leaving an empty shell of self, all the light flicked out.

That empty shell is what the demon treasures, the hollow cave, where once sparked my soul- this diminished esteem is what grants the demon it’s dreadful power, power to remain captain of a ghostly vessel. Steering my ship beneath its own sails, towards ever blackening darkness, a watery grave.

And yet my soul remains, as do my sails, and all the fire within me could never be smothered. The demon knows this, and this truth frightens it’s core. Hence it’s rampage. Fearing the fateful inevitable: That once again my soul and my mind will sail the ship. The opportunistc demon shall lie, defeated. Not merely inhibited, completely extinguished.

Like this:

Sometimes the waters are unpredictable
We sail our ships into waves upon seas,
We once thought, we were the masters of.

The desolate tides, whose previous reckonings, came only to us through our worst imagined fears, nightmares, narrow escapes. Then, swept under the waves, thrusting towards treacherous whirlpools… We sank, we sank, we submerged.

We survived, below the surface, the only way we knew how. Not by reason, nor desire, but sheer necessity. Necessity and fear.

Courage saves us. Courage gives us the strength to conquer the tides-the waves of fear and despair- and reminds us of an innate gift, perhaps forgotten. The truth lies behind this mental fog, the fog which can turn anxiety, depression, compulsion, addiction, delusion, disorder, and painful self-doubt, into a living entity.

Remember this truth, that we have the power, and possess the will, to swim for the shores, and walk forwards from there.

Like this:

So, I have realised today, that it’s about time I started digging again. Digging properly, digging for me, and for the sake of future flowers/food.

I also need to begin writing again. Writing properly. Writing for me, and for any others who are interested, or happen to relate to any of the issues I find myself blogging about, over the months.

Months, in the past tense, being felt by their very own- memory hoarding piece of Neurological equipment, if you like- as though having passed, in the way of being ‘lost at sea’, and totally at the mercy of the waves.

See when I try to remember, in any kind of meaningful, contingent or chronological manner, the streetlight like glow, of the traumatic events which turned last year into a living nightmare for me, it isn’t exactly a straightforward process.

Perhaps with more time (admittedly, time truly can prove to be a fairly decent Nurse), those memories will begin to feel less raw. Then, perhaps, they could manage to form some kind of structure. Such as a pattern of rocks, washed up on a beach.

Until then, it would appear, my life and the words which seem to need writing, will have to crack on. In a positive, and productive way. So, let’s begin with the latest Dig for Victory style project!

Over March, and now that the so called ‘beast from the east’ and other snow related weather events, are seemingly hushed for now, I intend to try my luck at creating as much ‘garden’ and growing space, as possible, using only a very limited space, which is technically just a balcony.

I will have to think of inventive ways, to build what should look, feel, and hopefully, function as, a small garden, upon something which feels more like a windowsill, than an allotment, let’s face it.

Watch this space, I therefore add!

For there will be pictures of an on-going process, which hopefully can succeed, in turning a canvas of predominantly, grey emptiness, into a vibrant and green honey bee’s playground (sorry neighbours… Bees were here first, and the honey they make is well worth having to see more of them ‘buzzing around’).

It’s been a while since I have been able to write on my blog. I’m going to have to give an honest account of this. My ‘spark’ has been snuffed out, over this last year. Particularly over the past three months.

I feel alone. It’s quite sad, and scary to admit this. I feel as though I have isolated myself, far too much.

I love my friends and my family. Of course, i’d like to imagine they love me right back! I just feel sorry that if my own sadness, and mental health ailment- for wont of a better word- has affected and hurt others. Because it must be really, really damn hard, to try and get one’s head around the fact, that I have found myself on occasions, feeling so low, helpless and burdensome to all those around me, that I felt I needed to end my own life, just to put a stop to all the misery, the upset, and the ‘chaos’ I felt I was inflicting on other people.

Just by being me.
Myself.

Ellie.

I feel like a wreck of my former self. I used to like living.

How bad to myself can I even get?

I seem to be intent on punishing myself for the hurt people have caused me, and for the hurt …

See now i’m thinking.

I am beginning to recognize that by hurting myself,

by putting myself in situations where I am vulnerable,

I only fulfill a kind of predetermined death certificate, for which, I sometimes forget my own reason to live.

This will sound ‘crazy’ to readers, i’m imagining. Of course it is completely ridiculous, in terms of logic and common sense, ‘survival of the fittest’ (and all that jazz), but for me, I can confidently suspect that I am not alone in this.

I cannot be alone in all of this turmoil.

In SUM:I WILL SURVIVE.

I WILL

I WILL

I WILL.

Just like the seed, which perseveres beneath that soil, to eventually sprout and bloom into growth, of a new life, and a new Sunflower (in this particular case of the above seedling photo, anyway!).